


we both know I'm not going up there

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Crack Treated Seriously, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gen, Id Fic, Multi, Physical Abuse, Time Travel Fix-It, underage marriage engineered by the time-traveling underage party
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:20:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22315459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: The title is from "This is My House, This Is My House" from We Were Promised Jetpacks. Lana pileofsith, aka Adsecula here, first recommended "It's Thunder and It's Lightning", off the sameThese Four Wallsalbum as a Palpatine song.Rey, as might be guessed from the timeline, won't appear for some time yet.
Relationships: Cosinga Palpatine & Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Hego Damask | Darth Plagueis & Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Sheev Palpatine & Rey
Kudos: 10





	we both know I'm not going up there

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "This is My House, This Is My House" from We Were Promised Jetpacks. Lana pileofsith, aka Adsecula here, first recommended "It's Thunder and It's Lightning", off the same _These Four Walls_ album as a Palpatine song.
> 
> Rey, as might be guessed from the timeline, won't appear for some time yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (said additional warnings are in the chapter end note and pertain to the "underage marriage..." tag, which is only planned in this chapter, but they also spoil this first chapter a bit; read them if you are nervous about that)

The feel of someone backhanding him in the face comes as a shock, for several reasons, some of which are on their own surprising.

1) He wasn't expecting to feel anything; he had...lost, and surely death wouldn't be as detailed as... 

2) it's much harder than anyone would use to say, wake him. Even if they were also irritated at him.

3) Usually, Cosinga hit him where it wouldn't show (and this was probably going to leave a mark, for a few days)

3-a) he hasn't so much as dreamed of the old bastard in years, in decades even.

3-b) Plagueis, too, didn't try to mark up his face; the Naboo would assume that but wouldn't have been happy that he _enjoyed being hit._ Which would rather get in the way of their plans...

Whatever this is, reality or whatever, it fades in, as if he had, in fact, blacked out. And it is Cosinga, it's _kriffing_ **Cosinga** , what in a thousand hells?

It takes him several long minutes, of his blasted sire's words not registering, to work out they're at the Lake District house, with a thousand memories tinged with the bad ones. He recognizes the vase, the one Sybil... 

The one Sybil broke when he was _fourteen_ , the night after a terrible birthday, given it was also election day, and one he hasn't thought about in years.

He peers blearily down at his ...very childish hands. 

"I _said,_ do you understand?!" Cosinga demands.

"I couldn't hear all of that; you left my ears ringing," he blurts cheekily before he can stop himself.

"You _bastard_ ," Cosinga says icily. "You're in danger of being disowned. Go to your room and don't expect any supper. I'd cane you right now if I didn't have an extremely important meeting."

That, at least--that he can work with, being dismissed to his room. Maybe he can work out there when this is, and even what's happening, at least granted this isn't some completely bizarre version of hell.

His feet travel the right path almost of their own accord, even though he doesn't consciously remember the layout of this house very well. He lies down to think, feeling unaccountably tired and thinking it will look appropriately contrite, though the pain in his jaw (was Cosinga wearing rings? He hadn't noticed) confines him to lying either on his back or on the other side, facing away from the door. 

There are shaak-mown hills outside the window and what he thinks are berry bramble hummocks, with a verdant forest in the distance. Cosinga didn't give him a room with one of the prized views, of the lake or of the tended grounds. And yet, it's all very...pastoral.

He concludes it probably isn't hell when Mother comes in, and sighs. "You know, I think he would be a lot clearer if your father didn't take to hitting you at every provocation. Want some ice?"

It suddenly hits him with adult clarity that she's trapped too. Also, she smells of a cologne he associates with Ruwee Nabarrie (not that it's him, now) and _not_ Cosinga, which throws into sharp relief the dimly and childishly understood fact that, like his father (which is a crisp memory, because he ( _Sheev_ ) was always his _mother's child_ to the man, despite what genetic testing said), she carried on with people outside her marriage. But, unlike with Cosinga, it's not a socially acceptable vice, for a woman. So she's trapped.

Which doesn't mean there are some grand and absurd thoughts of oh, usurping his father's position like in the old tragedies, when he interlaces his hand in hers. Actually ( _actually_ , and it presses on his chest like a vice) it feels so much more like the deathbed goodbye they...should have had. If he hadn't been egged on by Plagueis, if she hadn't been inseparable from the cruel reign of her husband in his head, if children had had any rights--that is, if there had been ( _would be_ ) any way to get rid of Cosinga, without also destroying her and the children. 

Being disowned, earlier, that was an idle threat, one Cosinga would never actually allow (he hasn't got any better of an heir for one) and it's a good thing he retains some Sith trained detachment in his mind, so that he doesn't laugh madly, at the not-quite irony in his trying to claim Rey. Too much like Cosinga.

Whom he's going to have to deal with for... who knows how long. He hasn't figured out the date! Or, equivalently, how old he is, and he's not about to ask Mother, lest she think him... well, lest things get wildly more complicated than he's prepared to deal with right now.

"Yeah," he says, in a small and still childish voice, "that would be nice."

"I'll send some up," she says, and kisses his cheek, a stand-in for affectionate words that would be a risk to say because ( _Anakin_ , nine years old and desperately missing his mother, comes to mind) he's not supposed to be...how do they say it, a "mama's boy"? 

The ice soothes his head but provides no solution to his quandaries. However, another bright thought occurs: he doesn't get the speeder until well after that fourteenth birthday, so if Sybil still breaks it then (he doesn't remember the events today, among decades of memories, but that might not mean anything so far as history changing; they're quite commonplace to his childhood), he has no blood on these smooth and childish hands. Or at least no lives taken. He probably has gotten in enough of a fistfight to cause a bloody nose by now, but such childish shenanigans don't really concern him too much. Noses heal, death...generally doesn't. Surely being thrown back into your past isn't a usual occurrence.

And apparently it's a tiring one, because his eyelids sink shut at what can't be past seven in the evening, (why hasn't he got a clock in his room?! Is it fate trying to stop him learning even the weekday and monthday and trying to work mathematically back?) and all fades into oblivion.

At first, when he sees (...that _can't_ be Plagueis, can it?) the interior of a cave of some sort (or perhaps a mine; Sidious was never well acquainted with geology) the natural assumption is that, in fact, he's just being treated to a series of vignettes about his life as some sort of didactic torment or something, only when he looks down his hands are transparent and blue, and he has no memory of this ...Bith.

Maybe it is a strange post-death experience, maybe it isn't.

He doesn't think about possible consequences to changing the past, because he has no idea until later that that might be what he's doing. 

Plagueis, if it is him, is trying to kill the Bith, it's quite clear. And just to mess with the old Muun, Palpatine decides to stop it, if that's at all possible.

It... _is_. If only it didn't involve (yes, this absolutely is Hego Damask, but _younger_ ) Plagueis staring at him with a confused emotion, and this Bith making a benediction-like gesture towards him. 

The transparent blue hands are still those of a child, and maybe just maybe (if only in his dreams?) he has saved a life, before taking the first one.

...

It must have been a vision or dream, because he wakes into childhood again, eats revolting porridge with Mina and Sybil (his childish body insists despite its reaction to the texture, isn't accustomed, exactly, to deprivation from food, and is probably also still growing), and is sent off to school for the... week. Ah, yes. He must be twelve or thirteen, he must be, because those were the years when Cosinga wanted to transition him to boarding school (get rid of him), but it was seen as more proper for him to come home every weekend. That's going to be... a boon and an annoyance. Palpatine honestly has no desire to live with roughly thirteen year-old boys again, but it might just give him a little more freedom, to plan or something, than with Cosinga.

In a history class he pays very little attention to today, the idea comes into focus: he's going to figure out how to get rid of Cosinga, but _only_ Cosinga, this time, and ideally without creating a debt to Plagueis. He's going to change this history, because, really, he hasn't the patience to live through some... ninety and more years of political manipulation and frankly, misery. Not, generally, _worse_ than Cosinga, but that was about all to be said for it.

The Force thrums, so naturally he sits straighter, on high alert, and he doesn't actually hear the teacher (a petty and vindictive man) asking after his health. He hadn't...well, in the first place, he'd had no familiarity with it at this point in his life to know what it was, so of course he couldn't have known even if it did. But--but! It's a pleased thrum, like approval, and maybe of his idea. 

He skives off lunch period and goes to a fruit stand and buys a soft sweet fruit of the forest, native to Naboo, one he hasn't tasted in years, that was politically unpopular, with his pocket change.

Laws class, though--it is a completely absurd idea, but if his twenty years later knowledge of galactic law isn't all then-recent future reforms, he has the beginnings of one possible solution, and before Plagueis should come to Naboo...that is, if his dream didn't so drastically alter history that it won't happen. Because they cover some facts about marriage law, and a) Naboo has an agreement to recognize marriages from any region of Republic space and b) spousal claim trumps parental clutches, even though this doesn't interact favorably for his purposes with the age of majority.

It's not that he wants to be a child groom. And he'd better go with someone human and probably a plausible woman, so that Cosinga will have as little grounds for contesting his future marriage itself, but not someone who will recreate his father's tyranny. Certain, and reasonably civilized (rather than, say Hutt Space) planets allow consent to marry at sixteen, which gives him three or four years to find someone...five or six years older, yes (better to get around Naboo's bizarrely stringent age of majority) and somehow persuade her into a marriage. 

(Even sixteen sounds absurdly young)

And because he is not his father, he will agree to her doing whatever she wants as long as she doesn't abuse him or get herself arrested. Again, it's a preposterous plan, but better a marriage with prenuptials and under no false pretenses than signing his life away to the Sith at _seventeen_ , right? 

But it won't help the rest of the family that Cosinga dominates, and he'll have to research to make sure there aren't any holes in the plan. 

...

His dreams that night take him back to the cave or mine, but he thinks they're closer to the entrance, or rather, their exit, now, with a faint glint of light and a breeze.

The Bith says (and it's all he properly gets to hear) "I've been thinking, Plagueis, and perhaps your notion about discarding the Rule of Two has some merit."

So is this Plagueis's master? And does that suggest he's less ...safe from being recruited by the Sith, that Damask may still try to come get him? 

He is able to watch them walk out and depart, Plagueis's demeanor suggesting that he's a bit put out, but the two seem amicable even so.

...

There are three Republic planets that have a human majority, consent to marriage at sixteen (vitally including for foreigners), and an extremely intriguing arrangement where (in fact it is one of only three conditions where Chandrilia allows consent at sixteen instead of "within half a standard year of eighteen", the others being with some forms of parental agreement, and financial duress) an early marriage, or strictly speaking, a legally equivalent engagement, may be entered into, with a clause to reevaluate it at or by the time both parties have reached a certain mandated age and freely break if necessary.

Chandrilia is Mon Mothma's planet (not entirely endearing), and (at least in Galactic Basic) expresses the mandated age as "within half a standard year of twenty-one", which is likely no good for his purposes, if his bride would probably send him back into Cosinga's clutches for six months thanks to that damned high Naboo age of majority. Eriadu (Tarkin.) mandates that men recommit to their early marriages at thirty, and women at twenty five, which probably serves some sordid purpose... At least as he reads it, the age still applies to both, which decreases his chances of finding someone agreeable to his potentially trapping her for fourteen years, but doesn't throw him back onto Naboo's lack of emancipation for twenty year old "minors". Serenno, which was--is Dooku's planet (he won't be there, he's a Jedi, and would he really ever even consider marrying Palpatine, even as a convenient legal fiction?), simply has "twenty five standard years", and lacks an Eriadu ambiguity about lack of consummation possibly invalidating such agreements. 

So he decides to focus on Serenno and Eriadu, though naturally just on befriending someone at first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of the plot of this fic involves Palpatine, plopped back into his early teenage body, plotting to get married, entirely as convenient and mutually agreeable legal fiction, as soon as at all reasonable, in hopes of breaking the legal ties to his abusive father without getting entangled with the also abusive Plagueis. He has enough wits about him to select someone who won't demand consummation, although there are vague allusions to the [fictional] laws he's hoping to exploit being exploited in other, bad ways. There aren't any sex scenes whatsoever intended, let alone with underage characters. 
> 
> There is, however, other child abuse and may be canon-typical violence or political intrigue in the future. Also some references to parents holding heterosexist or misogynisticly patriarchal views.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Early (though usually more overtly legal) marriages are not unheard of for people raised in abusive households, including marriages chosen by the teens as a hope for escape. But know that abuse victims may be more likely to end up with abusive partners and that even other relationships formed coming directly from this environment could contain stressors that don't make for a Happy Healthy Relationship™ easily and straight away.
> 
> (If you happen to need help on this front, there are resources out there. Getting away can be daunting, and seem impossible even before encountering obstacles outside of our own heads (it's not just the worries invoked by abusers), but persist. Know that there are people out there, even if they aren't already in your life, who want to see people freed from abuse. I'm cheering for you, and seconding the dedication on The Mountain Goats album _The Sunset Tree_ : "Dedicated to any young [people] anywhere who live with people who abuse them, with the following good news: _you are going to make it out of there alive/you will live to tell your story/never lose hope_ "
> 
> I know I read many a Potions & Snitches rescuer fantasy in my teens before I managed to begin to get away, and my situation was easier in some ways than the one I've given Palpatine here.)


End file.
